The Brookhaven leader., 1887-09-08
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
'Woman's ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Suggested BY It's Study.
The Home the Realm wherein She
ReiCns-Musculine Women and
Enemlnate Men Discussed in
Their Domestic Relations,


subject Of his sixth sermon at "The Hamp-
tons" "Woman's Opportunity" his text
being:
So God created man in his own image, IN the
image OF God created he him; male and female
created ne them.-Genesis T., q.
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake. made man and woman for spe-
cific work, and to move in particular
spheres-man 10 be regnant in his realm,
woman 20 be dominant in hers. The bound
airy ihe between Italy and Switzerland,
between England and Scotland, is not
more thoroughly marked than this dis
tinction between the empire masculine and
the empire feminine. So entirely dissim-
liar are the fields to which God called them
that YOU can no more compare them than
you can oxygen and hydrogen, water and
grass, trees and stars. All this talk about
the superiority of one sex TO the other sex
is an everl9Nting waste of ink and speech.
A jewelsr may have a scale so delicate
that Re can weigh the dust Of diamonds,
bUrwhere are the scales so delicate that you
can weigh them in affection against affec-
toin, sentiment against sentiment, thought
against thought, soul against soul, mans
world against wOman's worldE You
come out with your stereotyped remark,
the man is superior 70 woman in intellect;
and then open on nv desk the swarthy,
irou-tvped, thunder bolted writings OF
Harriet Martiueau, and Elizabeth Brown
ms. and George Eliot. You come on
with your stereotvped remark about
womau's superiority 10 man in the item OF
affection, but ask YOU where was there
more capacity to love than in John, the
disciple. and Robert McCheyne, the
SCotChman. and John Symmetrical, the
Methodist. and Henry Martin, the mis-
sionary. The hearts of those men were so
lar-e, that after YOU had rolled
into them two bemspheres, there
was room still left to marshal
the hosts of Heaven and set up the throne
OF the eternal Jehovah. | deny to man
the throne Intellectual. l deny to woman
the throne aFectional. No human phrase
ologv will ever define the spheres while
there is an intuition by which we know
when a man is in his realm, and when
woman is in her realm, and when either OF
them is out of it. No bungling legislature
ought TO attempt to make definition or
to say: "This is tho line and that is the
line"
Mv theory is that il woman wants to
vote she ought 10 vote, and that if man
wants TO cmbroider and keep house he
Ou5 ul u It tiION ca " lOldCl anu hOSP
house. There are masculine women and
etTemiuate men. My theory is that you
have no right To interfere with any ones
doing any thing that is righteous. AL
hauy and Washington might as we'll de-
cree by legislation how high brown
thrasher should fly, or how deep trout
should swim, as to try to seek out the
height or the depth of woman's
duty, The question of capacity
will settle finally the whole ques-
ton, the whole subject. When
woman is prepared to preach, she will
preach and neither conference nor presby-
terry can hinder her. When woman is
prepared to move in highest commercial
spheres she will have great influence on
the exchange, and no boards Of trade can
hinder her. want woman to understand
that heart and brain can overly any bar
rier that politicians may set up, and that
nothing ran keep her back or keep her
down hut the question Of incapacity.
There are women, know, of most unde-
sirable nature, who wander up and down
the country-haying 10 homes Of their
own, or forsHEing their own homes-talk-
ing about their rights, and We know very
well that they themselves are tit neither
20 vote nor to keep house. Their mission
seems to be TO humliate the two sexes at
the thought of what any of US might be-
come. No one would want to live under
the laws that such women would enact, or
TO have cast upon society the children
that such a woman would raise. But
shall show you this morning that the best
rights that woman can own she al
ready has in her possession; that her posi-
ton in this country at this time is not one
nj mil AT IN hut Of nj
ton; that the grandeur and power of her
realm have never Vet been appreciated;
that she sits to-day on a throne SO high
that all the Zones of earth piled on top
of each other would not make for her
foo:stool. Here is the platform on which
she stands. Away down below It are the
ballot-box and the congressional as
semblage and the legislative hall. Women
always have voted and always will vote.
Our great-grandfathers thought they were
by their votes putting Washington into
the presidential chair. No. His mother,
hv the principles she taught him, and by
the habits she inculcated made him Presi-
dent. 1t was a Christian mothers hand
dropping the ballot when Lord Bacon
wrote, and Newton philosophical,
and Alfred the Great governed,
and jonathan Edwards Numbered Of
judgment to come. How many men there
have been in high political station who
would have been insufficient to stand the
test to which their moral principle was put
had it not been for wife's voice that en-
cOuraged them to do right, and wife's
PRAYER that sounded louder than the
clamor of partisanship? Why, my friends,
the right of suffrage, as we men exercise
it, seems to be a feeble thing. You,
Christian man, come up TO the ballot-box
and you drop your vote Right after you
comes a libertine, or sOt-the offscouring
of the street-and he drops his vote; and
his vote counteracts yours. But if in the
quiet of home life a daughter by her
Christian demeanor, a wife by her in
dustry, a mother by her faithfulness, casts
vote in the right direction, then nothing
can resist it, and the influence of that vote
will throb through the eternities.
NY chief anxiety then, is not that wom-
an have other rights accorded her, but
that she, by the grace of God, rise up to
the appreciation of the glorious rights she
already possesses. This morning 1 shall
only have time to speak Of one grand and
all-absorbing right that every woman has,
and that is to make home happy. That
realm no one has ever disputed with her.
Men may come home at noon or at night,
and they tarry a comparatively little
while; but she all day long governs 1t,
beauties it, sanctifies il. 1t is within her
power to make it the most attractive place
ON earth. 1t is the only calm harbor in
this outside world and the business world